


Aubade

by Faemonic



Series: Songs of the Sunsets [2]
Category: Otherfaith Religion & Lore
Genre: F/F, Gen, Laetha priestess previously sworn off field work seen rappelling, awkward breakup, just-so story, rainbow unicorn fairy princess also cold-blooded killer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-25 00:34:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 1,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4939879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faemonic/pseuds/Faemonic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quasi-sequel to <em>Palinode</em>. Not technically songs. May also contain sunrises, moon phases, rainbows, aurorae, and blue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 5

High above the lands of the West, Althea Altair gripped another handhold and shifted her position. She did this with her eyes closed, because the sky could only be navigated by touch, although shining through this layer of the sky was the noon sun that would have burnt or blinded anybody else. 

She hung from a harness and a rope web of crampons, carabiners, and rappelling devices.

When she reached out for the next handhold and felt a vaster smoothness, she put the fingertip of one glove in her mouth and pulled it off. With a now-bare hand, she rapped her knuckles against the surface. The sky opened up, and a hand reached out for hers and pulled her through the trap door.

When Althea stood upright, she opened her eyes, and closed them again—with a grunt, shielding her face with a sleeve. She removed her harness with her eyes closed, which made it more difficult.

“Welcome to the observatory,” said a robotic and tinny voice like an Aletheia’s, but Althea knew that it was no Aletheia.

Another voice echoed from further off, the Dierne’s voice. “Hey! You’re earlier than we expected.”

“Was the observatory about to get _more_ garish?” Althea asked. The Dierne’s laughter signaled her approach, and Althea felt moved to elaborate what she had glimpsed. “Seriously. Everything used to be yellow. Now it’s fuschia, and aqua, and…yellows I can taste just by looking at them. Tangerine and saffron.”

The tinny, robotic voice offered, “I think it’s pretty.”

Althea grunted again, addressing the Dierne. “Irene helped you redecorate, didn’t she.”

After a pause, the Dierne said, “Yes.”

Althea couldn’t see Irene’s pout as the faery princess wriggled her fingers in space, (really, into the holographic matrix motion-interface) typing again: _“I think it’s pretty!”_ The programming turned the typeset words into sounds.

“More than that,” the Dierne added, “Irene’s going to live here from now on.”

Althea said, “Lily Bell was supposed to.”

“She’s in the other observatory. We’re going to go see her, remember? Come on, let’s go.” The Dierne made her way to the door, waving behind her at Irene. “If you need anything, Irene, you have my number…”

Althea followed the Dierne’s voice, still insisting, “But, why?”


	2. 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At some point, such as at this point, this might show to be a quasi-sequel to [Peace at Last](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4816025?view_full_work=true), but reading _that_ won't necessarily make _this_ make more sense.

The prototype holographic matrix motion-interface had been constructed in the industrial Kitchen. The Clarene spoke of replicating it in the cities, and even in the orchard and wilds, but the tongue-less Irene would be the first to test it.

So, Irene stood within the space, and began to type on a keyboard that didn’t appear to be there. “Thank you. I’m sure that many people like me would find this structure helpful and valuable.”

“That’s true,” the Clarene said, from where she stood outside the invisible grid. “But you’re not usually so obtuse.” It wasn't that Irene didn't think of other people, but the Clarene sensed that she had wanted to say something else.

Irene replied, “I’ve been thinking. We were so young when we got this whole world started and”

The Clarene corrected, “I did that, created the world.”

“we’ve grown into very different people since then.”

“And?”

The Dierne walked into the grid then, exclaiming, “I hear words! The grid is live!” She caught Irene’s stricken expression and added, doubtfully, “The grid is live, isn’t it?”

Irene continued to type, “I don’t feel the same” she paused, “attachment, or passion, as I once did.”

The Clarene didn’t speak for a while. When she did, she spoke a bored-sounding, “What do you expect me to do about it?”

“Just to know it. Our relationship has changed. Our expectations should change. I don’t even know what my expectations are in telling you this.”

“Get out,” the Clarene said. She turned to the Dierne, saying, “You, out of this conversation.” She turned to Irene and said, “You, out of the West.”

The Dierne said, “I object and also enquire.”

“Everything you said is true,” the Clarene said to Irene, as she walked around her. “I haven’t felt you in my heart so much lately, either. But you’re living off the land grown from my heart. Do you really mean that you don’t love me?”

Irene replied, “Yes.” 

“How do you think that feels? No, don’t answer that—What you think about me is none of my business anymore.” The Clarene asked, instead, “What would you do if you were me?”

Irene replied, “I’m not you. I’ll leave.”

“No,” the Dierne said. “I mean—you don’t have to—”

Irene continued, “I’ll be at a disadvantage outside of the West, but I’ll bear it and overcome it”

The Clarene interrupted, “Spare me.”

Irene shrugged at the Dierne, threw up her hands, and walked off the grid.

The Dierne blurted, as she passed her, “You can stay in the observatory! You won’t be living off the land. It’s in the sky. You can live there with me.”

The Clarene heard this and thought it over as Irene edged towards the grid with a suspicious expression.

The Clarene said, “Irene can live there instead of you if she wants.”

“Instead of me,” the Dierne corrected herself. “Yes.”

Irene, having returned to the grid proper, began to type, “That sounds good to me. But I feel moved to ask…why?”


	3. 2

The Laethelia wrapped her arms around the mermaid Seama in comfort. Seama looked up, and up, and up, and saw beyond all that could be seen. “I will rise,” so promised Seama, “even if I leave behind nothing of myself but a body of salt.”

The Clarene nodded when she heard this. She had not built the sky to serve as a barrier to the people of the West in going into outer space. The King of the West turned to the Dierne and said, “Seama makes her own decisions, as well as the star made hers to return to the stars. The mermaid is lonely now, and that is pain that would never have been…had they never met.”

The Dierne lifted her chin and said, “There were joys, too, that would never have been had I kept Seama’s lover in the observatory.”

The Clarene shook her head in disapproval. “I gave you a responsibility that you accepted. Yet the first star you found that had fallen upon the firmament, you immediately allowed entry. Why?”


	4. 1

“Because,” the Dierne would later answer, “She wasn’t a mere star…”

The Dierne laid on the floor of her new abode, this blister in the firmament. Through the floor she could watch the West, and did. Miserably. This was too much like being in outer space again.

She heard a thud, and a groaning, “Oww…” and knew that she was soon to meet the first to fall above the West since the Sundering.

And she would say, “From here, you can go to the world of humans, or to North-East-South Faery, or even return to your siblings. Do not enter the West, for our God-King has forbidden this.”

The real reason the Dierne betrayed this responsibility, was that she could not convincingly answer: _“Forbidden, but why?”_


	5. 6

Irene opened the trapdoor again to find a Centry and a faery hound riding a cloud. She knew them, and wished silently that they hadn’t known her.

“Your royal highness,” spoke the Centry, “We come bearing gifts from the Ophelia. She said that it was a housewarming present.” The Centry shifted uncomfortably. “That is to say, we no longer come bearing it because we no longer know where it is. It can’t have gone far, though.”

The faery hound twitched a nose towards the trapdoor, and sat back on its hind legs and raised its paws.

“You’re right!” the Centry exclaimed. “It did find its own way in!”

Irene felt a velvety nuzzling at her shoulder, saw the tip of a single crooked horn at the corner of her eye. 

“A lightning horse!” The Centry announced. “It’s not a horse, really, it’s a unicorn.”

Irene smiled, saluted, and carefully shut the door. When she turned, the lightning horse had galloped—faster than galloped, perhaps it had bolted—away.

She wandered the vast expanse of the room, round with domed ceilings, no walls now but colorful windows, and she remembered and felt ashamed. The Centry and the faery hound had been her own troop, until she put them under Claire’s command. The other half, she had kept for herself, and lost from herself—they had mutinied at a crucial moment. Claire must have had more charisma.


	6. 7

The Dierne sat by the River Ophelia and asked, “Mother, why is the sky blue?”

The Ophelia smiled as she answered. “Ask Irene. She colors the skies now.”

“She’s the first one I asked. She smiled like you are smiling now, and she told me to ask you—because you were ‘the blue fairy’.”

“Not quite that shade,” the Ophelia said, “Still, I’m flattered. Look, she also kept your yellows.”


	7. 4

Irene had lent some light to the one who had fallen from the sky, who was supposed to return to outer space but instead lived in another structure like the observatory. This fallen being would not stay, however. She would regularly leave the firmament for the realm of the stars.

Seama saw the round silver shape in the sky, knew it for her beloved, and pushed against the Laethelia to get closer to her. The Laethelia, for some mysterious reason, would not release Seama. So, Seama pushed again, and struggled more. When the silver light waned, Seama would rest and the tides would stay low.


	8. 8

Rainbows. Aurorae. Sunsets, sunrises, and every color of day in between. Irene paints them all in with her own feathers.

When she's found somebody who's fallen, she goes to meet them and says that they can go from here to the human world, or to North-East-South Faery, or return to the world above, or even settle in a blister and add to a neighborhood of constellations.

But if they breach the firmament and enter the West, she will hunt them down and kill them. She has already killed more than a few, for arguing.


	9. 0

The Clarene raised her arms so that the barrier of a firmament rose from the edges of the world and met at the zenith of what would now be the sky. The substance of it formed dents, lumps, and blisters—but it would serve its purpose. When stars fell, they would fall beyond the firmament. Let them decide there if they would enter the human world, or North-East-South Faery, or even rejoin their siblings in outer space—but none from there should enter the West again.


End file.
